Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
November 18, 2007
Profile of an IRS Agent

The New York Times profiles Jeff Novitzky, the IRS agent responsible for the BALCO investigation. I wish the Times had gone into more detail as to why the investigation started, because there are conflicting stories here:

Assigned to the case after a tip, Mr. Novitzky started going through the Balco trash in September 2002. The reasons for the investigation are unclear. Collecting drug samples and financial records weekly, Mr. Novitzky identified more than a dozen famous clients.

...

In letters to Scott N. Schools, the interim United States attorney in San Francisco, Mr. Rains argued that the government should walk away from its investigation because of Mr. Novitzky's "vendetta" against Mr. Bonds.

But Dwight Sparlin, a retired I.R.S. manager who led the San Francisco office when the Balco case started, said the original focus was on Mr. Conte.

"He wasn't even looking at Barry Bonds," Mr. Sparlin said in an interview. "What appears to be a small money-laundering case, you never know where it will go."

But later in the same article:

In early 2003, Mr. Novitzky had a state narcotics agent go undercover in a gym to try to befriend Mr. Anderson. The agent, Iran White, later told Playboy magazine that Mr. Novitzky was obsessed with Mr. Bonds and talked about writing a book. One of the task force agents corroborated Mr. White's account, according to Mr. Rains's letters to Mr. Schools.

The Playboy article is no longer online, but my post on it is here. I'm starting to think that the truth is somewhere in the middle. The investigation may have started as focused on BALCO, but somewhere in there Novitzky started focusing on Bonds. We'll see if Bonds' lawyers can use that against the IRS agent.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:08 AM | Cheating | TrackBack (0)
Comments

The Playboy article's author has explained it further.

See http://www.playboy.com/blog/2007/11/breaking-bonds.html

Posted by: Eddie at November 20, 2007 12:38 AM
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